[Geowanking] Spatial analysis was Re: MapMaker

Tue Jul 1 10:27:12 PDT 2008

Good point - I was remembering the non-edited version.  Forgot it was cleaned up for publication.  The last sentence gets closest:

"Dr. Harvey has created an Orwellian mythology based on faulty assertions and leaps of logic.  Hopefully the discipline of Geography can see beyond these dystopian views to leverage the opportunities these innovations (the GeoWeb) bring to the table, and educate the millions of new geographers hungry for knowledge."

A better example is in 2007 a journalist from Wired Magazine went to the AAG meeting in San Francisco and came across so many sessions like this:

http://communicate.aag.org/eseries/aag_org/program/AbstractDetail.cfm?AbstractID=11709

he ended up not writing about the conference at all.  The content of the conference sessions just was not relevant to the mainstream.  That is not to say critical post modern thought is not important, but in the academic discipline of Geography I'd say it dominates.  One of the reasons I left was I'd have to incorporate post modern work into my research to have a good shot at getting an academic job.

Too often post modern theory replaces good solid empirical research.  Too many grad students scared of statistics and mathematics turn to using big words instead of solid research to help inform and educate the public.  Far too often the research behind post modern work is a farce - in the case of Sokal's Hoax this is literal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

The point of the rebuttal in the EPB piece was that research to back up the post modern argument that virtual globes are creating corporate control of scientific data was based on lousy empirical research.  While it sounds like dry aspects of corporate ownership that is a bit of the point.  Good research can be dry when dissecting the details.  If you skip to the end with big words calling Google "Big Brother" you are not doing a service to anyone.

I think I've gone way off topic so I'll drop it there.

best,

sean

FortiusOne Inc,
2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307
Arlington, VA 22201
cell - 202-321-3914

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Larcombe" <andrew at andrewlarcombe.co.uk>
To: geowanking at lists.burri.to
Sent: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 12:00:29 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Spatial analysis was Re:  MapMaker

On 1 Jul 2008, at 16:02, Sean.Gorman at fortiusone.com wrote:

> It also a bit scary to see the postmodern arguments against  
> geographic analysis crop up.  They also have an important role to  
> play in the critique of research, but I'd also argue they have  
> crippled the discipline of geography.  The focus has become what is  
> wrong with maps and analysis and not what problems it can solve  
> (full rant here - http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b3406b).

Where's the rant against post-modernist arguments in that article?  
All I saw in the article and that it was responding to was issues  
surrounding quite dry legal aspects of corporate data ownership.

Cheers,

A

-- 
Andrew Larcombe
Freelance Geospatial, Database & Web Programming

web: http://www.andrewlarcombe.co.uk : http://blog.andrewl.net
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